{"id":206473,"date":"2026-04-04T16:10:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/forget-euphemism-trump-is-using-unabashed-viciousness-in-his-language-against-iran-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T16:10:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:10:24","slug":"forget-euphemism-trump-is-using-unabashed-viciousness-in-his-language-against-iran-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/forget-euphemism-trump-is-using-unabashed-viciousness-in-his-language-against-iran-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget euphemism, Trump is using unabashed viciousness in his language against Iran – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration takes pleasure in deploying dysphemism to describe the killing of Iranians
On 23 March, Donald Trump<\/a> said that if things didn\u2019t go to his liking in Iran, \u201cwe just keep bombing our little hearts out\u201d. A week later the US president told journalists on Air Force One: \u201cYou never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up.\u201d
On 4 March, Pete Hegseth<\/a> squirmed in pleasure as he described \u201cdeath and destruction from the sky all day long\u201d. Whatever happened to the subtle art of political euphemism?
The UK had a secretary at war long before it ever had a minister of defence, and the US did not rename its department of war to \u201cdefense\u201d until after the second world war. People sniggered when Trump and Hegseth announced that \u201cdepartment of war\u201d would be its new name, but that might be charitably taken as a macho refusal to mince words. The many overseas adventures of the US military since 1945, after all, have not all been exclusively defensive.
Official names for military actions are usually mealy-mouthed: the US invasion of Panama in 1989 was called Operation Just Cause, while the last Gulf war, as everyone remembers fondly, was Operation Iraqi Freedom. The name for the current war, Operation Epic Fury, certainly sounds more like a teenage boy\u2019s idea of comic-book armageddon.
But even the word \u201coperation\u201d is a euphemism \u2013 these are not exercises in healthcare \u2013 and even Trump still won\u2019t call his war a war, since that would raise uncomfortable questions about the consent of Congress. So it is instead, according to Trump, an \u201cexcursion\u201d, or \u201cour lovely \u2018stay\u2019 in Iran\u201d. Vladimir Putin, who calls his four-year war on Ukraine a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d, would approve.
The opposite of a euphemism is a dysphemism: a name for something that makes it sound maximally horrible. Politicians normally use dysphemisms for their opponents: people might be labelled \u201cterrorists\u201d or \u201cfascists\u201d, already engaged in \u201cgenocide\u201d or threatening to nuke London within 15 minutes.
The Trump administration<\/a>, however, revels in the use of dysphemism for its own actions. \u201cThis was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,\u201d Hegseth said on 4 March. \u201cWe are punching them while they\u2019re down, which is exactly how it should be.\u201d
The following week, Trump posted on Truth Social: \u201cWatch what happens to these deranged scumbags [ie, Iranians] today. They\u2019ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!\u201d The crudity, here, is the point. Sociolinguists say that the use of dysphemism violates social norms and taboos, and Trump is nothing if not the taboo-buster-in-chief.
Do I endorse war crimes, by threatening to bomb Iran\u2019s desalination plants? Very well then, I endorse war crimes. Who cares? Hegseth, meanwhile, announced a policy of giving \u201cno quarter\u201d to the enemy, ie refusing to take prisoners, which is itself another war crime. The \u201csecretary of war\u201d, especially, is addicted to virtue signalling, as long as the virtue being signalled is martial<\/a>.
His favourite term is \u201clethality\u201d; he loves telling the armed forces how \u201clethal\u201d they are. \u201cWe are not defenders any more,\u201d he announced gleefully. \u201cWe are warriors: trained to kill the enemy and break their will.\u201d (It might seem excessive to break their will after killing them, but why settle for half measures?) He seemed to experience a sadistic pleasure in announcing the sinking of an Iranian warship by a US torpedo, enjoying the idea of the doomed crew\u2019s \u201cquiet death\u201d<\/a>.
This sort of unabashed viciousness is part of the appeal of the Maga administration for its fans, and might seem like a refreshing return to plain speaking. But you can, of course, speak plainly while lying. (\u201cThe great enemy of clear language is insincerity,\u201d claimed George Orwell. Well, who is more insincere than Trump?) And Trump and Hegseth\u2019s vivid wallowings in industrial ultraviolence are in reality no more honest than regular political dissembling.
After all, if your focus is on destruction as a virtue in itself, does it really matter what you blow up and who you kill? The goal, as Hegseth described it, is to \u201cunleash\u201d American \u201clethality\u201d, not to \u201cshackle\u201d it, as though the US armed forces are a dangerous dog that deserves to roam free across the globe, pursuing its own savage instincts wherever it turns.
But while this maniacal, no-bullshit posturing, this chest-beating fiesta of blood and guts, takes centre stage, the real bullshit \u2013 of geopolitical miscalculation and cynical profiteering \u2013 seems to be simply swept under the carpet.
The Financial Times reports that a broker acting for Hegseth sought to invest in US military companies<\/a> before the war. Trump told the same paper: \u201cMy favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran.\u201d.
The current landing page of the White House\u2019s website, by contrast, celebrates Trump\u2019s accomplishments so far in terms of the finest obfuscation: \u201cAbroad, a doctrine of peace through strength has secured alliances, ended eight wars, and positioned America as an indispensable force for global stability.\u201d Peace through strength, is it? As the party in Nineteen Eighty-Four insisted: \u201cWar is peace\u201d.
What do Trump and Hegseth really want? One answer is: to enrich Trump and Hegseth. But if their real aim all along was simply to troll the shade of Orwell, they are doing an absolutely lethal job.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration takes pleasure in deploying dysphemism to describe the killing of IraniansOn 23 March, Donald Trump said that if things didn\u2019t go to his liking in Iran, \u201cwe just keep bombing our little hearts out\u201d. A week later the US president told journalists on Air Force One: \u201cYou never know with Iran because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}